Today’s REI Classroom Lesson

Scott Carson shares his strategy on expanding your database through LinkedIn. He shares how to make sure your profile is set up properly and how to find important connections organically.

REI Classroom Summary

After you’ve built up your connections, Scott talks about how to export your connections so that they can be added to your database.

Listen to this REI Classroom Lesson

Real Estate Investing Classroom Show Transcripts:

Mike: Welcome back to the flipnerd.com REI Classroom where experts from across the real estate investing industry teach you quick lessons to take your business to the next level. And now, let’s meet today’s expert host.
Scott: Hey, guys, Scott Carson here with weclosenotes.com. And I’m excited to be the guest speaker today on the REI Classroom. And today’s topic is how to effectively use LinkedIn to grow your database.
Mike: This REI Classroom real estate lesson is sponsored by theinvestormachine.com, FlipNerd’s private investor coaching program and your blueprint to investing success.
Scott: Now, I’m sure many of you out there have a LinkedIn profile. If you don’t, go get one today. You’re really not in business if you’re not on LinkedIn. Now, there was a little article that came out that polled CEOs and the social media platforms so they spend the most amount of time on. And overwhelmingly, 22% of them say that they spend their time on LinkedIn and Twitter. Zero said they waste time on Fakebook, or Facebook. I’m sorry. Okay. So think about that and who you’re talking to and who you surround yourselves with but LinkedIn is a very, very powerful tool that you can use to grow your database very organically and sometimes a little less organic. You need a little miracle grow on that to grow your database exponentially.
So one of the things that we do to grow our database because I had right over 8,000 connections on LinkedIn. I was just sitting at roughly about 6,000 for a while and realized I really need to spend a little more time on LinkedIn. And literally, in the last 45 days, I’ve gone from 6,200 connections to over 8,000. Very niche connections in my line of work. Now, what you can do once you’ve completed your LinkedIn profile and yes, put a good photo on there, fill out your complete profile. Don’t put something from you in a glamour shots with the gold boa guys, all right. Ladies, avoid the cleavage shots. It’s a professional website, okay? Maybe the booties. I’m just joking.
But anyway, what I’m trying to get at with you guys and gals out there is have a complete profile and then use the search engine in LinkedIn to connect with the people that you want to connect with, the people that you need to. Maybe you’re looking for more wholesale deals so I would go and type in “Wholesale investors” or “wholesale real estate,” or “Real estate investors.” I believe I looked today and if you type in “Real estate investor,” there’s 45,000 . . . almost 46,000 people that have that in their title.
Now, what would you have done with those people? Well, you’re all real estate investors. Two, you’re all looking for deals. And three, you may have deals or you’re going to have potentially private money. People are looking to invest. And if you’re going to do something, you’re in the 5% of people who are actually doing something, those people are going to want to connect with you and potentially, give you some private money to lend or to use in your deal.
So what we do is we go on there and type in “Real estate investor.” It’ll pull up a list of people. Then what you want to do on LinkedIn is change a little bit of their profiles to make it look a little bit more less Facebook. You want to go to the right side of your search engine where it says “First connection, second connection, or third connection.” And you want to fill that second connection. The first connection is you’re already connected to them. You don’t need to waste your time with them because you’re already connected, they’re already on your database on LinkedIn and things like that. You want to hit “Second connections.” Now what that will do is it will narrow your list down and then you want to go through and connect with those people.
Now, LinkedIn does limit the amount of connections you can add in a daily, weekly basis based on how many connections you currently have. So if you’ve got about 1,000 connections, you’re really going to be able to add about 500, 400 people within a week. But the beautiful thing, you just give it time to work. This thing kind of grows itself a little bit. So literally, the other day, we were spending some time on there. It showed us literally 45,000 real estate investors. We hit second connections, it pulled up 50 pages at 20 people deep which is 1,000 people is all it would show. And literally, I hired a VA just to go through and connect with the people that I wasn’t connected to.
Now, what happens? Well, if you go back a couple of days later, you’ll see that your connections have increased. And secondly, if you do that same search again in second connections, you don’t have a whole new batch of second connections to connect to because all the people that were seconds that are now connected to you are now first connections.
What is the beauty of growing your database this way? Well, the real magic besides just growing your list organically is the fact that you can export your connections in LinkedIn. Yes, you can export it, very simple, by going to your Settings and clicking “Download” or “Export Connections.” If you’ve got the new facets, or the new evolution of LinkedIn, it’s going to give you a download link for your whole database and everything involved with LinkedIn. So they will email a link to download.
But literally, if you export your connections and LinkedIn will give you first name, last names, emails, the company name that they work for, and their job title there. Great pieces of information that you can put into your database, add to your drip marketing campaign, reach out, connect, network with people, and go from there. Because it’s all about our database. It’s all about the base. It’s all about the database. Trust me. I can’t sing as well. I’ve leave it at that. I don’t want your ears to bleed. But that’s what it comes down to in real estate.
Well, I don’t care if you’re a real estate investor, a mortgage broker, a realtor, title company, a note investor, a private money guy, a hard money guy, it’s all about you growing your database to make things happen. And LinkedIn, by far, is the best way to organically grow your database of connections and expand your net of marketing across the country.
So that’s what I have to teach you about using LinkedIn. It’s a very simple thing. You can literally do it from your smartphone while sitting there wasting time either waiting on your husband or waiting on the wife, put some bun [SP], or while you’re sitting on the couch at night. So it’s a very easy thing to do to add 20, 100 connections a day and really rock your real estate world. So that’s all I’ve had for you today, guys, on the guest lesson of the REI Classroom. Scott Carson from weclosenotes.com. I look forward in seeing you all at the top.
Mike: Are you looking to change your life through real estate investing? If you’re interested in either getting started or taking your business to the next level, please check out FlipNerd’s private program at theinvestormachine.com. This is the most robust real estate investor coaching, networking, and mastermind on the planet and designed for your success.
If you’re ready to roll up your sleeves, ready to take personal responsibility for your own success, and ready to dive into a world class instructional coaching program that provides you step-by-step instruction to help you achieve financial freedom, then you should apply today. Spaces are limited and candidates are only considered after an application and interview process. Our 12-month investor program is unparalleled. Think you might be a fit? Learn more today at theinvestormachine.com.
Please note, the views and opinions expressed by the individuals in this program do not necessarily reflect those of flipnerd.com or any of its partners, advertisers, or affiliates. Please consult professionals before making any investment or tax decisions, as real estate investing can be risky.
Are you a member yet of flipnerd.com, the hottest real estate investing social community online? If not, you can join for free in less than 30 seconds and get access to hundreds of off-market deals, vendors in your market to help you in your business, and you can start networking with thousands of other investors just like you. Get your free account now at flipnerd.com.
Please check out the FlipNerd family of real estate investing shows where you can access hundreds of expert interviews, quick tips, and lessons from leaders across the real estate investing industry. They’re available at flipnerd.com/shows or simply search for FlipNerd in the iTunes store.

I am owner and managing member of WeCloseNotes.com Inc, a Austin based, defaulted note buying company. I specialize in finding non performing notes on residential and commercial properties and purchasing these notes for our own portfolio.